Revolutions

On March 12, 1848, King William II of the Netherlands
woke up in the middle of the night, sweating, his
heart pounding, and with an upset stomach, despite
having eaten that evening. His troubled mind was on
the revolutions sweeping across Europe and parts of
Latin America. Uprisings in Paris against the King of
France and his government, in several German states
and in Denmark, had led to the sudden ousting and
reform of ancient European regimes. People all over
Europe joined ad hoc movements of the middles
classes, workers, and reformers to express their discontent
with the leadership in their countries. They
demanded more participation in government and
more democracy.

Similar calls had been growing louder in his Kingdom
of the Netherlands over the last four years. So far,
William had bluntly refused any reforms. In recent
days, however, the demand for reforms in the kingdom
was being made not only by members of parliament,
but also by large mobs roaming the streets of
Amsterdam and The Hague. Revolution was sitting
at the King’s bedside and was ready to strike. Fearful
of losing his position altogether, William eventually
decided to give in to the demands. He later explained
that he had “changed from a conservative to a liberal
overnight.” That very morning, he appointed a
commission to review the Dutch constitution. This
new constitution paved the way for a parliamentary
democracy. It enshrined freedom of education, freedom
of association and a free press. It ensured direct
elections at all levels of government, an annual budget
set by parliament, and governmental accountability.

It also resulted in the loss of personal executive power
for William. The pragmatic approach taken by the
King thus led to a peaceful transition in the system
of government in the Netherlands.

The revolutions of 1848 and 1849 were fuelled by
demands for better representation in the parliamentary
system coming from a rapidly growing base
of educated citizens. Their demands of access to,
and influence, in the decision-making process were
founded on the classic values of participation, fair
representation, transparency, and accountability.

The modern era

Our supreme audit institutions find their raison
d’ętre in those nineteenth-century democratic principles.
We ensure accountability, increase transparency
and contribute continuously to the improvement of
public administration in our countries. From time
to time, however, we are confronted with our own
limitations. Until about the last decade of the twentieth
century, governments and SAIs used to have a
near monopoly of information concerning the public
domain. A paradigm shift took place with the introduction
of digital mass storage and its large-scale use
at the end of the twentieth century. Information analysis
and information sharing is no longer a singular
process. Through digitization and datafication there
is now much more information available than ever
before. Furthermore, information or data is accessible
24/7, as it is no longer confined to a physical archive.
Moreover, information is continuously reusable for
different interpretations and purposes.

In the twenty-first century, we witness a global movement that is, once again, demanding more participation,
more transparency and more accountability.
One example of this movement is the Open
Government Partnership. This multi-stakeholder network
organization strives for governments to become
sustainably more transparent, more accountable, and
more responsive to their own citizens, the ultimate
goal is to improve the quality of governance, and
the quality of services that citizens receive. This is
not dissimilar to the arguments put forward by the
revolutionary movements of the nineteenth century.

Techniques and mind set

As SAIs, we are facing twenty-first-century challenges,
using twentieth-century techniques, in nineteenth-
century institutions. We, therefore, have an
important task to remain relevant to the general public.
In my opinion, this can be achieved by embracing
newly developed techniques and adopting an inclusive
mind set. Recently, I have seen two examples of what
we can do to tackle these challenges. The first was
presented by Ms. Tytti Yli-Viikari, the newly elected
Auditor General of Finland, during a joint visit to the
SAI of Turkey. She argued that SAIs need to invest in
new technology and in how we use that technology.
Data-mining tools, intelligent data analysis systems,
and text analytics are available already. Now that
these have been developed for broad use, we need
to invest in acquiring new hardware, software, and
human resources. This will give us the opportunity
to use both structured and unstructured data from
both internal and external sources. Data can now
help identify otherwise unseen issues and improve
the general performance of public administration.

SAIs are in a position to use these techniques and
we can combine the necessary open and closed data
from different sources to provide new insights into
potential efficiency improvements and more effective
public policies. Combined with hindsight, these
new insights might even lead to foresight. Instead of
simply asking what happened, SAIs that employ data
analytics can look ahead and gain insight and foresight
into what might happen in the future. SAIs can
move towards different forms of foresight auditing by
using their audit data, coupled with analytic tools, to
build models and perform scenarios, aimed at further
improving accountability. Many of those tools are
available already, for example in direct marketing.
In the near future, self-learning computer systems
might even be able to assist us in our auditing work
as they are becoming ever smarter and are able to
independently combine information from various
sources.

The second example concerns our position in
society and comes from the SAI of Brazil. The use
of mass stored data and technological tools such as
data analytics shows that we no longer have to work
alone; indeed, we should not work alone anymore.
Citizens, civil society organizations and others should
also have the opportunity to use data from public
administration, so they can provide us with insights
of their own, thereby contributing to the story that we
tell as SAIs. Thus, together with society, we are able to
present a much clearer picture of what is happening.
This does mean that governments and as many other
parties as possible should be willing to share their data
in a format that is open, i.e. complete, from a primary
source, accessible, machine-readable, non-discriminatory
and with an open standard and licence. The
SAI of Brazil encourages its public administration to
provide the general public with access to such data.
They do so by convincing them that society requires
more transparency in public administration and that,
in return, society can contribute directly with innovative
services to improve public administration.
Not least, opening up data by public administration
gives people the opportunity to create new businesses
and progress economic development. In this way,
the SAI of Brazil has adopted the mind set of open
government.

Call to arms!

In November 2015, The Netherlands Court of Audit
organized a EUROSAI Open Data conference. Twenty-
eight SAIs participated and were resolute in their
ambitions: 92 percent want to open up SAIs own
data; 43 percent want to audit the state of open data
in their country this year; and 81 percent of them
expect to use open data in audits in the future. The
movement has started, now we need momentum. As
SAIs, we are information brokers and the nature of
the information we are dealing with is changing. We
need to be on top of that change, both by embracing
new techniques and adapting our mindset. Unlike
the nineteenth century, the twenty-first century public
now demands, thanks to technological developments,
direct participation and involvement. But
these demands are still founded on the same classic
values of participation, fair representation, transparency
and accountability. We are in the middle of
the data revolution and we need to wake up quickly
and address the demands for access to information
and cooperation with society. Because, ultimately,
it is not only the people that want to achieve more
transparency and accountability. SAIs and the people
want the same. Let us work towards that!